It is a mistake to confuse spirituality with religion; the institutional dogmas of the religions do not speak to many now and we need a new symbolic container for our spirituality.

In essence all the major religions say the same thing: the kingdom of god is within you and love one another.

In the past we needed to project a God-figure out there; now we don't want that and seem to want science and consumerism to be our gods.

Yet the spiritual spark is alive and well and deep within us and many people have important spiritual experiences which are not church based particularly around important events in their lives.

Everything changes and I suspect Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and Buddha would all be happier with our individual searches rather than the bigotry of fundamentalism in all its forms.

Dione Smith email address supplied